Authority & Influence: Institutions, Issues and Concepts in Canadian Politics

W.M. Dobell was Professor of Political Science at the University of Western Ontario, London.

Carla Cassidy, Phyllis Clarke, and Wayne Petrozzi teach in the Politics Department of Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in Toronto, where the politics courses are developed collectively. Since they claim that the Canadian politics course at Ryerson is too diverse and comprehensive to be accommodated by any single textbook, they determined to produce collegially a textbook suited to their particular concerns.

There is a textbook rather similar to Authoriiy & Influence, the sixth edition of which is in preparation. This is Paul W. Fox, editor, Politics: Canada (McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 5th edition 1982). Both textbooks are exceedingly long and contain a diversity of articles, essays, and excerpts from academics, politicians, and journalists. Cassidy et al. assert that Ryerson students prefer collections of articles over a single or co-authored textbook, but since they do not mention their competition it is a matter of inference what they find to be deficient in Politics: Canada.

The most striking difference is a much heavier influence on political economy in the newer textbook, a perspective that is back in fashion in the 1980s after a quarter-century of relative neglect. Two readings from Wallace Clement are featured in this section, the only author to be extended the double honor. The Fox textbook is 120 pages longer, however, and has fuller treatment of the executive, the legislative, the judiciary, and elections.

Most articles in both textbooks have been previously published. Several of the new articles in Fox were specially commissioned from outside academics, which is not apparently the case in Authority & Influence. The sources of previous publication are not listed in the case of four outsiders’ articles, but the argument is similar to what at least three of them have previously written. Only three articles were clearly written especially for this textbook, one provided by each of the editors. The interested market for this paperback is obviously technical colleges plus freshman or sophomore university students.